I’m not a social media guy, but I do have a newsletter, so I thought I’d share a quick thought about this week - I promise this won’t be a regular occurrence…
Back in my freshman year in high school, a friend of mine was driving a car on a Saturday night from Morristown, New Jersey, to Mendham, the next town over, with two other kids from my neighborhood. While driving far too fast my friend lost control, smashed into a tree, and one of those kids from my neighborhood, a high school senior named Adam Mast, was killed.
I barely knew Adam, even though he lived around the corner, but he was in my typing class and I knew it was going to be very strange in that class when we went back to school on Monday.
If you took typing in 1987, you learned to type on a typewriter. And because I went to public school, we didn’t have enough new typewriters for everyone, so some of the 30 of us learned on very old electric typewriters, while others - I assume the seniors and juniors in the class - got to learn on a fancy upgraded typewriter.
When we got to class that Monday it was odd and somber and uncomfortable - I was 14 and coming to grips with the fact that a friend of mine was pretty directly responsible for the death of a another kid.
Mr. Caputo taught the class - an older teacher whose first name I cannot find online - and stood at the front. And what he said is burned into my brain 35 years later:
“It’s for the GODDAMNDEST reason, but we have a newer typewriter available if someone wants to switch.”
I think about that so often. Still. So often. A teenager is dead for the goddamndest reason. The guy’s got to teach a typing class. That 60something year old guy didn’t know how to handle this any better than we did. The typewriter was available, someone should benefit.
In the Hasan Minhaj version of this story, I would be the kid who got the typewriter, and that launched his career. I didn’t get the typewriter. I have no idea who did, or if they learned to type.
But I learned to type, and I think about that day sometimes when I’m typing, and about Adam Mast. It’s too tidy to say that his death caused me to do anything. It didn’t. But I think of it the other way - things I’ve done (writing this stupid newsletter, for example) cause me to think about him. And in a very very very tiny way, he continues to have an impact 35 years later.
Jews have a saying when someone dies - may their memory be a blessing. What’s more of a blessing than the joy of writing?
So many of us this week have been thinking about the tragedies in the Middle East, and what we can do to help. I think the best thing you can do is to do something you’ve been putting off doing. I don’t know what that is - training for a 5k run? writing a book? calling a friend you haven’t talked to in a while? I have no idea. But if you do, you’ll know that the horrors of this week caused you to make something positive happen.
(Thanks for letting me into your inbox…next week, more gobbledy. I promise.
Perfectly said. Now I’m thinking about both Adam Mast, whom I did not know but remember this incident, and Mr. Caputo.
There is such tragedy in teen driver fatalities, and so much of it could be prevented. I'm so obsessed with this that I spend well over six figures building this as a non revenue generating free resource for parents: www.rookierides.com